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Posts Tagged ‘songs’

Our family has an elaborate, celebratory Christmas Eve program. First, a bountiful dinner. Then, a spiritual program about the birth of Jesus Christ and his significance to us and the world. Next, a trumpet solo of a Christmas carol by me (this year, “O Come All Ye Faithful”), followed by a sing-along of more carols and songs, accompanied by my wife on the piano. After that, gift presentations and openings. Then, a reading of “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” followed by a “midnight” snack. Finally, we empty our stockings of their small “stuffer” gifts and decorate the gumdrop tree.

There is time for both solemnity and frivolity, mixed with love and gratitude. All this we did on Sunday, 24 December 2017.

Music belongs in any celebration. If you play and/or sing at any level, include it in your own celebrations of holidays and birthdays. Play your trumpet for your family. It’ll make them happy…you’ll see.

“Holiday Inn,” a favorite American musical that is based upon a 1942 movie of the same name, starring Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire, ends its run at the 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle tomorrow. It’s been playing there since 24 November. My Seattle family members and I went to see the performance on 16 December, and loved it, as we knew we would.

In the orchestra pit, Caryl Fantel was the conductor, and the trumpeters were Brad Allison and Paul Baron—the same two who played the musical, “Room With a View,” about which I posted a blog article on 6 June 2014 (see “Archives” in left column). They’re true pros.

The Beginning Band at Skyview Middle School presented its first concert on Thursday morning, 14 December, at about 8 a.m. About 100 parents, relatives and friends attended. The 68-member band is comprised of 5th graders from Crystal Springs, Canyon Creek, and Fernwood Elementary Schools in the Northshore School District. They played Christmas songs, including “Jingle Bells,” and several others, sometimes as full band and sometimes as individual sections.

Ben Fowler teaches flutes, Matt Simmons teaches woodwinds, and Jane Lin teaches percussion and also is the music teacher at Crystal Springs Elementary. The section which I teach is Brass Instruments (trumpets and trombones). It is the largest group in the band—25 trumpeters and 5 trombonists—one of the best at this stage of the school year that I’ve taught in 7 years.

Last Saturday afternoon, 15 December 2017, about 45 people in a retirement community whom I’d never met came to hear me play trumpet. I had promised to perform a one-hour show for them, playing a mixture of 25 songs—12 Christmas songs and 13 songs from classic musicals and movies. I entitled my show “Things Remembered.”

I chose songs to induce them to remember different times and stages in their own lives. Here are some examples. One of the most beautiful songs ever written, “Over the Rainbow,” expresses our universal hopes and dreams about finding happiness and success, and “I’ve Got the World on a String” expresses our achievements of the same. But then, “Stormy Weather” expresses our feelings of failure and depression, while “Make Someone Happy” answers the question of how to make those Over-the-Rainbow dreams come true—love. For caring for babies, those helpless, totally dependent creatures we conceived, “Summertime” says it best.

The Christmas songs I played were to entice us to remember being a kid and later, having kids and grandkids. They tell us of the birth of our Savior. They renew our spirit, they spark new hopes and plans and joy and peace. My elderly audience sang the words from memory.

For thinking about retirement, I chose “When I’m Sixty-Four.” For feeling gratitude, I played “God Bless America.” For summing up our lives, I played the lovely, precious “What a Wonderful World,” and then finished with this earnest farewell, “Have Yourself a Very Merry Christmas.”

Amongst the songs, I worked in a dozen jokes that I have shared this year with my 12-year old granddaughter, who last Christmas gave me a whole book of jokes. And I offered a handout to the audience—a list of 50 jokes and riddles from that same book, so that they could share them with their own grandchildren. All 30 copies disappeared.

I played both my Getzen trumpet (Doc Severinsen model) and Super Olds cornet (63 years old). Sometimes I used a Harmon mute, as in “Santa Baby.” When I use a deep-cup mouthpiece with the cornet, it sounds like a flugelhorn. I tried to make my horns sing the lyrics of those lovely songs.

Their kind gifts totaled $20, which I then donated to VFW Post 1040, Lynnwood, where I am the Post Bugler.

SHAG’s Lynnwood City Center Senior Living

Senior Housing Assistance Group (SHAG) is a non-profit organization formed in 1988 and is the largest provider of affordable senior apartment homes in Washington State. SHAG offers some units at market rates with no tenant-income restrictions, and others which are for tenants living on limited incomes. In compliance with state and federal laws, SHAG gladly accepts Section 8d and VASH (Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing) certificates and vouchers.

SHAG communities serve more than 5,000 active, independent seniors in 25+ locations in the Puget Sound region, from Bellingham to Olympia, including eight locations in Seattle. These locations are near public transit hubs, retail shopping and public services.

All SHAG senior living communities have income and/or age restrictions that residents must meet in order to qualify for an apartment. The Lynnwood City Center Senior Living community serves seniors of all income levels who are 61 or older by the end of the current year or 55 or older and disabled. The minimum lease term is 6 months, if available, but leases are generally for 12 months. The units are 1- and 2-bedroom size. Certain units have washer/dryer hookups and reserved garage parking. However, you need not own a car to live here. If you qualify, you can join SHAG’s Nissan Leaf Program and drive a so-called “company car.” Many SHAG residents contract with in-home care providers for housekeeping and medical help.

Amenities at Lynnwood City Center include courtyards, a rooftop deck, fully equipped fitness center, social room and TV lounge, craft and game room, business center, pea patch, rooftop dog run, free Wi-Fi in common areas, and social activities. Small pets, such as cats or dogs weighing 25 lbs. or less, are welcome. There is a two-pet maximum per household, and a $100 fee per pet is due at move-in. All pets are subject to approval.

You can reach SHAG’s Lynnwood City Center at www.shaglynnwood.com and 425-201-5284. For SHAG itself, the website is http://www.housing4seniors.com, telephone 1-844-592-SHAG (7424).

Photos are courtesy of SHAG’s Lynnwood City Center. Please click on any photo to enlarge it.

On 1-3 December 2017, Alderwood Community Church (ACC) presented its 29th Christmas program in five public performances, drawing a total audience of more than 3,000. This year marked the 100th year since the Puget Mill Company developed the planned community called Alderwood Manor in 1917. As residents settled there, they wanted a church. In 1920, Alderwood Manor Community Church was born.

To celebrate this 100th anniversary year, ACC commissioned Matthew Wilson to write the play, “New Life of the Land.” Mr. Wilson attended ACC while growing up. It was presented as a musical drama, not a typical musical. None of the main characters sings or dances. In one comedic relief scene, a barbershop quartet is featured as they rehearse “Deck the Halls.” Instead, the orchestra and choir, under the direction of Linda Collins, perform music to open and close the drama; intersperse different scenes with songs; and provide soft, instrumental music (underscore) while the actors continue with the play. The stage sets employ mixed media: some outdoor scenes are presented by videos on three huge screens above the stage floor. The entire drama takes place during slightly more than one hour on Christmas Eve in 1917. A young couple who intend to marry obtains a 5-acre plot of land through the dramatic, providential trade of their train ticket with a stranger at the Alderwood Manor trolley station. They plan to raise chickens to support themselves and their (eventual) children.

The theme of the play is hope. Each of the four main characters have different hopes for themselves and each other. The hopes of Margaret (played by Hannah Blomberg) and Jebediah (Charley Delaney) come true. Eliza (Deborah Turcotte) is forced to abandon her hope for her granddaughter, Margaret. Finally, John (Mike Tate) undergoes a renewal: in the beginning, he has lost hope and is melancholy, having been crippled by polio. He wants to marry Margaret but has no job. In the end, he enthusiastically adopts her hope of staying in Alderwood Manor, establishing a chicken farm, and raising a family there. When they do acquire the land, he proposes marriage, and she accepts. They will enroll in the “New Life of the Land” program created by Puget Mill Company to help settlers learn to raise chickens and certain vegetable crops for sale and family food.

I have now played trumpet in four Christmas programs at ACC. Please see my blog posts of 23 April 2015, 15 December 2015, and 10 December 2016.

More ACC, Alderwood Manor, and Lynnwood History and Future Plans

The musical drama aroused my curiosity. I’ve lived in Edmonds for 14 years and don’t know much about Lynnwood history. What happened after 1917? How did we get to where we are now? Here’s some of what I’ve learned as a result of this Christmas program.

Before 1910, only a few hearty pioneers lived in the area. It took about two days to travel some 13 miles to Seattle. Then, in 1910, the electric trolley line which connected Seattle to

Linda Collins, ACC Orchestra and Choir Conductor

the Esperance stop near Hall’s Lake was extended to Everett. That cut the travel time from the Forest Park stop (later re-named the Alderwood Manor stop) to about one hour.

Around the turn of the 20th century, the Puget Mill Company owned thousands of acres of forest land north of Seattle. Once the land was logged, taxes remained the same as if it still was timbered. To reduce its tax burden, the company decided to sell off some 7,000 acres then covered with blackened stumps and snags. In 1917, it offered land for sale in 5- and 10-acre parcels, known as “stump farms,” within a planned community that it named “Alderwood Manor.” [Incidentally, 1917 is the year of my mother’s birth, may she rest in peace; it’s also the year that the Ballard Locks officially opened for boat traffic and America entered World War I.]

The Seattle-Everett Interurban Railway ran through Alderwood Manor. Just east of the electric trolley tracks, Puget Mill Company built a 30-acre Demonstration Farm to promote land sales. Here, land purchasers could learn to raise chickens, farm fish, and grow fruits and vegetables both for sale and family food. “New Life of the Land” was the name of this project. On the Demonstration Farm was a superintendent’s cottage, hotel, community hall. water tower, chicken houses, and an incubator house. The preferred chicken species was the single comb white leghorn. By 1921, the American Poultry Association had recognized Alderwood Manor as one of the nation’s greatest poultry centers.

Meanwhile, the early residents had a strong desire for a Christian church in their community. They began by meeting for Sunday School in private homes in 1919. On 28 November 1920, Alderwood Manor Community Church was born. They built a wood-frame building on the present site of ACC.

Through the years, things changed. Highway 99, to the west, was completed in 1927. The Great Depression hit Alderwood Manor hard, the price of eggs fell, and many residents left the business. Land parcels were subdivided and sold off. The Demonstration Farm was closed. In 1939, the crucial Interurban Railed ceased operations.

In the late 1940’s, after World War II, a community named Lynnwood (named after Lynn, a real estate agent’s wife) began to emerge around the intersection of Highway 99 and 196th Street SW. In 1939, the Interurban railway was converted into a power line corridor. In the 1990s, the right-of-way was opened to pedestrian and bicycle traffic. Today, the Interurban Trail is a 16-mile, hard-surfaced, non-motorized, rail trail.

The City of Lynnwood is now planning another major transformation. It is converting to high-density, high-rise, mixed-use (commercial and residential) zoning in its City Center. Among the regulatory changes is this: the maximum allowable building height in the City Center Core is up to 350 feet. Assuming that one story equals 10 feet, that’s a building height of 35 stories! The City’s long-range, 20-year vision is to become the “Bellevue of the North.” The current population of Lynnwood is about 38,000.

Much of Alderwood Manor and Lynnwood history is preserved in Heritage Park which opened in 2004 at 19921 Poplar Way. Even some of the original buildings and a railway car, Interurban Car 55, are located there. For more information about this area’s history and its future plans, please see:

2020 will be ACC’s 100th anniversary. I wonder what musical they will choose for their 32nd Christmas program. Will I still be playing trumpet and blogging in 2020, at age 80? As my dear, late mother-in-law, may she rest in peace, was fond of saying, “Time waits for no man.”

The ad said that Saturday, 7 October, would be the last day this year for the Edmonds Museum Summer Market (see http://www.historicedmonds.org/summermarket). So I hustled down to the adjacent Veterans Plaza, set up my trumpet and cornet at about 10:30 a.m., and played for 1.5 hours until noon. It was the first time I’d done it since 1 July—my wife and I had traveled to Washington, D.C., Scotland, Northern Ireland, and England for most of July and August.

My repertoire of some 125 songs comes mostly from musicals and movies, plus patriotic songs. Kind and generous people came up to make donations and talk. Music brings out the best in us, doesn’t it? To me, that’s why God gave us beauty and spread so much artistic talent among all the nations and cultures on earth. I often ask my listeners, “What’s your favorite musical?” One woman said Hello, Dolly, so I played the title song. Another said Fiddler on the Roof, and I played “If I Were a Rich Man.” Sometimes I sing, too, just because it’s so much fun, not because I can sing well, believe me. I like to sing “O, What a Beautiful Morning,” “St. James Infirmary,” “When I’m Sixty-Four,” “Shenandoah,” “When I Fall in Love,” “What a Wonderful World,” and a few others.

I raised $52 in that hour and a half. Then I gave half of it to VWF Post 8870 in Edmonds and VFW Post 1040 in Lynnwood, where I am the Post Bugler. Busking and teaching trumpet make me feel like Johnny Appleseed. Try it—you’ll like it, too.

Glenn Ledbetter, busking at Veterans Plaza in Edmonds. All donations ($128, so far) go to VFW.

I finally did it—public busking with my Getzen trumpet. It’s an idea that’s been germinating within me for a long time, especially since my wife and I enjoyed listening to a grisly, picturesque old accordion player on the bridge crossing the River Wear in Durham, England in August, 2014, and to a dandy Scottish bagpiper blasting his stirring tunes at the corner of Government and Belleville streets in downtown Victoria, B.C., Canada, on the many occasions we have visited there. “That’s fun,” I thought. “I can do that.”

So, on three recent Saturdays in June and July, as Nike would advise, I just did it. I donned by veterans cap, American-flag T-shirt, and sat myself down in Veterans Plaza in downtown Edmonds, adjacent to the Saturday Market on 5th Ave. N. and Bell St. As people came and went, walking, sitting, eating, talking, listening, I played for two hours from my busking book of about 125 pieces of music, mostly taken from musicals and movies, plus some patriotic songs and marches.

In my open trumpet case, I placed the sign, “Your Donations Go to VFW.” One Saturday, people donated $48, another $35, and another $45. I sent the $128 to VFW Post 1040 (Lynnwood), where I am the Post Bugler, and VFW Post 8870 (Edmonds), which built the new, outstanding Veterans Plaza. The plaza was dedicated on Memorial Day, 29 May 2017.

Busking is indeed fun. People come up and say the nicest things. Toddlers dance. It’s true—music is the universal language of mankind. Just do it, and you’ll see.

My wife and I have 9 wonderful grandchildren. One in New Zealand plays the drums. One in Alaska plays the violin, and another there plays the saxophone. One in Bellingham, Washington plays the ukulele. And now, this year, one here in Edmonds is learning to play the viola. My wife plays the piano, and I play the trumpet.

We could have a family septet, but what composer ever wrote music for that combination of instruments and when/where would we ever get together? We need an arranger, and then maybe we could all assemble somewhere for Christmas someday and perform.

We’re traditionalists. Each year after our traditional Christmas Eve ham dinner, we then participate in a traditional program in the living room of our home, reading the prophecy of Isaiah about the coming of a Savior and the story of Jesus’ birth, praying, singing and playing Christmas carols and songs, and opening gifts. That’s when three of us did play this year for the family—trumpet, viola, and piano.

From “The Big Book of Christmas Songs,” I played “O Holy Night,” accompanied by my wife on piano, and soloed “Santa Baby,” showing off my new Getzen trumpet (see my post of 14 December). Our granddaughter played a few pieces on her viola—some solo and some with accompaniment—from the instruction book, “Essential Elements for Strings, Book 1” by Robert Gillespie, Pamela Tellejohn Hayes, and Michael Allen. And while my wife played the piano, all six of us sang from her own beautiful songbook, “Christmas Songs and Carols for a Season of Happiness.” The songbook contains the lyrics to 39 pieces, and she plays the music by memory!

Next year, perhaps we’ll all three play together as a trio. Perhaps someone else will then join us, and we’ll work our way up towards becoming a family septet. Or maybe the other two grandchildren will choose their own favorite instruments and take some lessons so we can become a nonet.